Fish

Saturday, May 7, 2011

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: One is roots. The other is wings.-Hodding Carter, Jr.

Many times I've looked back upon my life and wondered how I got here, how I got to be the person that I am. The humorous answer might be "I took a left turn at Albuquerque". But in all honesty, thanks in large part to the efforts of my mother, I am who I am. She did a great job.

Our earliest memories are almost always of our mother. She is the one who sang us to back to sleep when nightmares awoke us. She kissed our boo-boos and bandaged our wounds. She nourished us with food and thought. She was our first teacher, doctor, and cheering section.

Through good times and bad, my mother was there. Even when I was a know-it-all teenager who questioned not only her intelligence, but her sanity as well. I remember butting heads on a few occasions. Not over life altering subjects but over silly mundane things like cleaning my room. On the big things, I rarely questioned my mother's wisdom. But I wouldn't let her know that, lest it go to her head.

Her mother, my grandmother, had seven children. A notable an formidable task even back in the fifties and sixties. Despite the chaos inherent ingrowing up in such a large family, my mother always has a calmness about her. Maybe that is why I'm an only child, she wanted to maintain that calmness. Even in the trying times I seldom heard her raise her voice in anger. Frustration...definitely, but seldom anger.

Especially now that I am a mother myself, I am thankful for the lessons she taught me. She taught me by example how to be a loving mother, an independent woman, and a caring human being. I have the strength to withstand my son's oncoming teen years because I know she survived mine. I put the extra work into my marriage because hers has lasted forty-one years. My life template is based in her examples.

Realizing how important and special your mother is comes as quite a shock when you become an adult. You come to realize that the old lady actually knew what she was talking about. We all eventually come to grips with the understanding that our mother's were once just like us..and that we are destined to become like them. And that is not such a bad thing after all!

Happy Mother's Day!

To all the Mothers and "not the Momma"s out there....Thank You for what you do!